


darling, feel better love

by DreamBrother



Series: better love [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Episode: s10e22 Aloha (Goodbye)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23620312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamBrother/pseuds/DreamBrother
Summary: Steve knows that he needs to atone for the pain he has caused Danny.Series finale fix-it (spoilers for season 10).
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Series: better love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700221
Comments: 85
Kudos: 273





	1. Grace

**Author's Note:**

> To say I was overwhelmed by the response to 'no better love' would be an understatement. Thank you so so much. 
> 
> I left 'no better love' as a stand-alone, as that was my initial intention, but I had these follow-up scenes in my head which develop further Steve's attempt to redeem himself. It should be about 4-5 chapters long, and would have been too long as one big one-shot. 
> 
> Please find the previous part of this series to understand this story. Title taken from Hozer's excellent song, Better Love.

After a night spent travelling last minute from Montana to New Jersey followed by a night of reflection and self-flagellation until the sun rose after which he crawled into the bed of the person he cared about most in the world to beg for another chance - was it any wonder that Steve fell asleep on the couch soon after breakfast? 

With one leg stretched alongside the length of the L-shaped couch, his head slumped against the back cushion and turned towards the wall, sounds began to filter through Steve’s consciousness as he slowly roused from what must have been a deep sleep. He wasn't aware how much time had passed since he'd passed out on the coach, but last thing he remembered was having breakfast with Danny and the kids. 

Grace had been quiet, not making eye contact with Steve, but where the night before Steve could sense an underlying current of anger in the girl he thought of as a daughter, this morning he just sensed sadness. He hadn't known which was worse. Danny also had been subdued, his injuries still dampening his usual spark. Charlie had provided the chatter and the energy, perhaps an unconscious desire to make up for the uncharacteristic behaviour of his father and sister, and Steve had tried his best to play along with the little Danny replica. 

Not opening his eyes, Steve tried to get a sense of his surroundings. The TV was on but the volume low, just enough to know it was on some sort of documentary. He could feel a hand wrapped loosely against his wrist, fingers rubbing softly against his pulse point. He would know the touch of those fingers anywhere. _Danny_. 

Except Danny wasn't alone. Danny was whispering, most likely out of consideration to Steve's impromptu nap, or maybe simply because the Danny he had found in Jersey, weeks after he had left him in Hawaii, had been a quieter Danny than he was used to, his flame not burning as bright. 

Steve didn’t know what made him keep pretending to be asleep. Maybe it was a desire to not interrupt Danny’s conversation, maybe he already felt he was intruding in a space he hadn't technically been invited into, and pretending to still be asleep was a way to not feel that way. Or maybe he was just nosy. Either way, with his face turned to the wall, the fact that his breathing had not changed noticeably and his eyes were still closed, no one would know he was now awake. 

"... transfer to NYU, Dad, it wouldn't be hard. Or Columbia, they've got a great medical school, it makes sense."

"No, monkey. You love Berkeley, you worked so hard to get in, and you’ve settled there.”

“Part of the reason I chose Berkeley was because it was the best university for me that was closest to Hawaii.”

“The flight time between Berkeley and Hawaii and Berkeley and here is the same. We won’t be any further way, just the opposite side of you.”

“Why won’t you let me do this? I’d still be going to a great school, but I would get to see you, Charlie, mum, grandma and grandpa, everyone, a lot more.”

“Because I don’t want you to have to give up something you’ve fought so hard for, monkey.”

“But you’ve given up so much for me. This is nothing in comparison. I want to do this, for you, for our family.”

“And I appreciate the thought, Grace, but it’s not your job to sacrifice stuff for me. That’s the benefit of being the kid. If you want to go to med school on the east coast when the time comes, that’s your choice. But you’re not shifting schools halfway through because you’re worried about me.”

“I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I’m not alone, baby.”

“You don’t know how long _he’s_ going to stick around for this time, Danno.” Steve tried not to flinch at suddenly being mentioned in Grace and Danny’s conversation, his heart thumping in his chest at the tone of Grace’s voice. 

“That’s not what I meant, Grace, and you know it.”

“Have you even asked him what he’s doing here?”

“Hey hey, easy on the hostility. I know you’re upset with him, and I would never police your feelings, but you need to give your uncle a break.”

“Why? He left you when you were still injured. You and I both know that if he was still in Oahu, you wouldn’t be in Jersey right now.”

Steve both felt and heard Danny sigh, Danny’s fingers on his wrist never ceasing their soft caress. Steve didn’t know if it was for Danny’s benefit, or his, but he appreciated it nonetheless as it took every ounce of his will power to not give away the fact that he wasn’t asleep. If he’d thought it had been hard to witness Grace’s anger towards him last night face to face, it was nothing compared to how it felt hearing her anger at Steve when she didn’t think Steve could hear her.

“Grace...do you remember when you were nine, and my old training officer took you from me?”

“When you and Uncle Steve came and got me from that storage box?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I remember bits and pieces. What about it?”

“That was, and remains to this day, the worst day of my life. To have you taken from me, because you are what I love more than anything, to have you hurt because of me... nothing will ever match the pain of that day.”

“But Danno, it wasn’t your fault. He was a bad guy, you did the right thing putting him in prison.”

“I know. And the only reason I’m bringing that up is because I know _exactly_ how Uncle Steve would have felt when I was taken a few weeks ago. Because I went through it with you. And if someone offered me the choice between a bullet to the chest, or reliving that day when Petersen took you, I would choose the bullet."

"Danno…"

"So give your uncle a break for me, would you? Because what he went through that day was a hundred times worse than me getting shot. So just because he isn't walking around with a cane and a hole in his chest doesn't mean he wasn't, or isn't, hurting really bad."

"I get what you're trying to say, Danno. But if the situation was reversed, you wouldn't have left him when he was injured."

There was a pause and for a minute, Steve was sure that in this moment, Danny would come to his senses and the entire Williams family would be lost to him forever. 

"Sometimes, you gotta put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you can help others, Grace. Your uncle has had a lot to deal with these past ten years. The people who took me are the same people who killed his dad ten years ago, and it brought back a lot of bad stuff for him. He needed to leave Hawaii for a little bit, and I can't blame him for that. As much as I would prefer to have him around so I can keep him safe, I rather he take care of himself first. And the same goes for you too. Yes, I would love to have you around all the time, but I rather you do what's best for you. And right now, that's Berkeley." 

How Danny and Grace hadn't noticed that Steve was close to hyperventilating next to them on the sofa, Steve had no idea but he wasn't going to count his blessings. Danny's thumb had started pressing down harder on the inside of his wrist, to the point where Steve could feel his own racing pulse throbbing against Danny's grip. 

"I just… I'm tired of seeing you get hurt, Danno."

"I know, baby." There was a sound of a light kiss. "But I'm a big boy, I can take care of myself. And as long as you and Charlie are safe and happy, I'm happy."

Whatever Grace's response would have been was lost in the sudden growl emanating from Steve's stomach, loud enough to cause the two Williams' sitting by him to start giggling. 

"I think that's a sign that we need to go grab lunch," Steve heard Danny whisper. "You okay with bagels? There is a great place a few minutes walk from here, your uncle Matt and I used to go there all the time."

"Sounds good, Danno."

"Great. Can you go get your brother for me? Think he's had enough toy time this morning."

"Sure. Is it okay if you two go and I stick around here?"

"Of course, monkey. Just text me what kinda bagel you want."

"Will do." Steve heard Grace get up, the sound of her steps fading as she headed towards the bedrooms. He kept his breathing uniform even as he felt the weight of his partner's gaze fall on him. Whatever ounce of hope he'd had that his pretence of being asleep had been successful left him as he felt Danny's thumbnail scratch against the pulse point in his wrist. 

"Same goes for you, babe. As long as you're happy and safe, I'm happy. So don't feel you owe it to me to stay here if you don’t want to be here,” whispered Danny. 

Danny didn't wait for Steve's response, and with a final squeeze of his hand, the other man got up and walked away.

Finally alone in the room, Steve's eyes opened and he brought up his hand to wipe away the moisture from his cheeks. Using the momentary solitude, Steve got up from the sofa, slipped his feet into his shoes by the door, and left the apartment.

X

"Uncle Steve?"

Steve jumped slightly, turning away from where he had been looking out at the Manhattan skyline towards Grace, standing behind him with a travel mug in her hands, a look of uncertainty on her face. 

"Grace? What are you doing up here?"

"Danno said I would find you here. Can we talk?"

"Yeah, of course, yeah." Steve let Grace lead them towards a bench, the same bench that he and Danny had sat at yesterday when Steve had shown up out of the blue. 

"Here," Grace said as she sat down, holding out the travel mug. 

"What's this?" Steve reached out and took it from Grace, sitting down at the opposite end of the bench, but leaning forward, elbows on his knees. 

"Coffee. Danno said he and Charlie will be back with lunch in about twenty minutes. Thought you might like something to tide you over until then."

"Thanks, kiddo, appreciate it." Steve took a sip from the mug, hoping the warmth would help settle his racing heart. He had known from his brief conversation with Grace last night that he had upset her deeply, the knowledge only confirmed by his eavesdropping of her conversation with Danny just now. He doubted she knew he had been awake for some of it, but he doubted Danny's attempt at defending Steve had been enough to get Grace to forgive him. 

Not that he could blame her. He, of all people, knew how hard it was to forgive people who hurt Danny, something he had in common with the girl sitting by him. He just never anticipated that one day he would be on the opposite side of the fence, being the one who would require Grace’s forgiveness for hurting her dad. 

"What happened to your tattoo?"

Startled from his thoughts, Steve looked at Grace and followed her gaze to where his sleeve had ridden up as he sat with his elbows on his knees, showing off the intricate tattoo on his right arm. 

"What do you mean?"

"Is that a burn?" Grace made to reach out and touch it before jerking her hand back.

"Oh. That." Steve took a big gulp of coffee to buy him some time.

"Don't do that."

"Don't do what, Grace?"

"Lie to me. I know that face, it's the one you make when you're trying to figure out how much of the truth you can tell me without dad getting angry with you for how much you told me."

Steve smiled. Like father, like daughter. It always warmed his heart when he would see his partner's traits in Grace, and it didn't surprise him that she'd inherited Danny's keen observation skills. What made Danny a great detective would make Grace a great doctor. 

"Uncle Steve?" 

Steve took a deep breath and started reliving the worst day of his life. "So um, that day, when your father was taken? He called me to say he was being followed. I drove as fast as I could, but by the time I got to him, his car was on fire." Steve swallowed against the lump in his throat as the feelings from those few minutes began rising up in him. "I didn't know he'd been taken, I thought he was still in the car, so I uh…"

"You burnt yourself trying to get my dad out of a burning car?"

"Well, he wasn't in there, they set it on fire as a distraction." And his sleeve catching fire, the feeling of the top two layers of his skin burning hadn't been enough to distract from the horror that was Danny being taken from him, and Steve being able to do fuck all about it. 

"But you thought he was in there?"

"For a minute, yeah." The worst minute of Steve's life, more so than the time ten years ago when he'd heard the shot that killed his father. If Cole hadn't been there with the fire extinguisher and saying that Danny hadn't been in the car…

A sniffle brought Steve out of his memories and he turned towards the source of the sound. "Grace?" 

He had barely finished saying her name when he found himself with an armful of the girl in question, her arms wrapping tight around his torso as Grace buried her head against his chest. Surprised, Steve dropped the travel mug and wrapped his arms around the girl he loved like a daughter. Turning on the bench so Grace could be more comfortable against him, he brought up a hand and started stroking her hair, as he'd done many times in the past when comforting her.

"Hey hey hey, what's wrong?" When there was no response, Steve freaked and unleashed the inner Danny in him: he started rambling: "If the burn bothers you, I'll cover it up, I can get some longer sleeved t-shirts. And I was gonna get it inked up again in a few months anyway when it’s healed, it'll be good as new, I prom-." He felt Grace shift her head and glancing down he saw her staring back at him, eyes moist, an unimpressed look on her face. "That's not the issue?"

Grace sniffled and shook her head before burrowing against his chest again, her face turned towards the skyline. "When I heard you'd left…without Danno, without telling me...I thought maybe we didn't matter to you anymore. But if you got burnt trying to save dad, that means you care, right?"

Steve's grip tightened around Grace, and it must have been painful but Grace didn't complain. He blinked rapidly to prevent moisture from gathering in his eyes, bringing a hand up under Grace's chin to tilt her face back towards him so she could see in his face that every word he said was the truth. "Gracie, no. Please, believe me when I say, there is no one I love more than you, your dad and your brother. I would give my life for you guys a hundred times over. You are my family, if you'll still have me."

"We've never said no to you, Uncle Steve. You're the one who left." 

"I know," Steve agreed with a sigh. "But I promise you, in my head, I wasn't leaving you or Danno or Charlie behind. I just needed to leave Hawaii for a little while."

"Danno would have gone with you, if you'd asked."

"I know. But he was hurt. I didn’t have a plan for where I was going, I didn’t want to drag him around with me when he needed to rest at home.”

Grace was silent for a few minutes and Steve let her be, choosing simply to run his hand up and down her arm to comfort her, appreciating her closeness when just last night he would have sworn he had damaged their relationship irreparably. 

"I'm sorry about your dad, what happened to him," said Grace softly. "I don't think I've ever said that to you."

The pain of the memory triggered by the words was gentled by the knowledge of who said them. Grace had been so young when his father had died, and he'd long ago accepted the fact that the tragedy of his father's passing had also been the reason behind the presence of Danny and Grace in his life. 

"Thank you, baby. He would have loved you and your dad." 

Of that, he had no doubt. He'd sometimes wondered what his father would have made of Danny, especially in the early years when the ties were present and the rants at an all time vitriolic high. He smiled at the thought of his father having to witness one of Danny’s diatribe against ham and pineapple pizza, his dad’s favourite. 

"I don't want to lose Danno the way you lost your dad." Grace whispered the words, but Steve heard them loud and clear and he tightened his grip around her, leading him to repeat the words he'd once said to her five years ago, when Danny had been arrested and extradited to Colombia. 

"I promise you kid, I promise I'll always bring Danno home, alright? 

"Okay."

"I love you, Gracie." Pressing a kiss in Grace’s hair, Steve prayed that the girl in his arms would give him a second chance, because he knew that if he didn’t make things right with her first, he had no chance in hell of making things right with Danny. 

"Love you too, Uncle Steve." 

Closing his eyes as relief washed over him, Steve turned his face up towards the afternoon sun, grateful that his actions over the past few weeks hadn’t ruined one of the most important relationships in his life. 

The moment was broken when he felt and heard a giggle. 

“Gracie?”

Grace’s giggling got louder as she turned to face him. “Do you have keys?”

“To the apartment?” Steve asked, and Grace nodded. “No, I didn’t grab any. Why?”

“I forgot to grab mine. Think we’re locked out until Danno and Charlie get back.”

Steve smiled and tapped one of the bobby pins that held Grace’s hair back from her face. “Come on. I’ll show you a trick if you promise not to tell on me to Danno.”

A look of absolute delight appeared on Grace’s face. “No way! That actually works?!?”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” teased Steve, laughing as Grace shot up from the bench and grabbing Steve by the hand, started dragging him towards the exit from the rooftop garden to the bank of elevators. 

Ten minutes later, Danny and Charlie returned to the apartment to find Steve and Grace curled up on the sofa watching an episode of How It’s Made. With his arm around Grace’s shoulders as she nestled into his side, Steve turned to see Danny looking at him with a soft smile on his face. Charlie, not wanting to be left out from the cuddlefest with his uncle, leapt onto the sofa and glued himself to Steve’s opposite side. 

“Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” Danny complained as he made his way over with the bag of food. Sitting down on Grace’s other side, he opened the bag and began distributing napkins and bagels. 

“Well…” started Steve, jerking as Danny reached past his daughter to poke him sharply in his side. 

Silenced for now, Steve sat back and let the peace and normality of having lunch with three of his most favourite people in the world wash over him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you found the resolution with Grace satisfactory - the chapter essentially centered around the fact that not much has been said (as far as I've noticed on Tumblr) about Steve's willingness to throw himself into a burning car for Danny, and that in that moment, he must have thought Danny was dead. Hopefully the Sherlock fans amongst you will remember that "fire always exposes our priorities", and so, that moment with the Camaro was more meaningful to me than the scene in the chapel (as excellent as that was), as those were just words, this was action. And considering where Steve got burnt, that was smack bang in the middle of his tattoo, which I wanted Grace to notice. Kudos if you notice another Sherlock-inspired moment in this fic. 
> 
> As always, your comments and kudos are much appreciated. I don't think this chapter would have seen the light of day without them!
> 
> Next chapter: Steve meets Stella Williams, who is nowhere near as forgiving as Grace, but just as protective of Danny.


	2. Stella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Drink?” asked Stella as she padded her way towards the drinks cabinet in the corner, her steps soft but sure, betraying her familiarity with her surroundings.
> 
> “Um, it’s late, I’m-” Steve began but was cut off. 
> 
> “Trust me, you’re gonna need it.” Six words and Steve’s spine straightened, his shoulders dropped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We meet Stella Williams in this chapter. I think in canon all we know is that she's the eldest and she had Eric when Danny was about 18. Everything else, I made it up to suit me. 
> 
> Thank you for your lovely comments to the last chapter, much appreciated!

“You must be Steve.”

Steve looked up from where he’d been flipping through Danny’s high school yearbook. He was, or had been, alone in the living room of Danny’s parents’ house. Clara and Eddie had taken Grace and Charlie to see Hamilton on Broadway, with Eddie having driven over to collect the four of them from Jersey City in his car soon after lunch. Danny had gone to bed soon after dinner, asking Steve to wait up for the kids to come back. They were spending the night so that the whole Williams family could gather for a family lunch the next day, with Bridget planning to bring her husband and kids, and Eric hoping to drop by as well. 

And last but not least, Stella Williams, who Danny had said would come by after her shift as an ER nurse at the local hospital that evening and spend the night so she could have more time with Grace, Charlie and Danny in the morning before she went back to work in the afternoon.

Steve stood up to greet the last member of the Williams family that he had not yet met. 

“Stella?” Steve felt awkward, not sure if he should go over and greet Stella with a hug or a handshake or whatever. The family resemblance was solid. Like Bridget and Danny, her hair was blonde and kept short and off her face, broad-shouldered like the rest of her siblings but with her height more akin to her second brother, Matt. Dressed in hospital scrubs, it was obvious she had just gotten off work. 

“Yeah. My folks not back yet with the kids?" Stella asked as she hung up her jacket by the front door before leaning against the doorway to the living room where Steve stood, arms crossed in front of her chest.

“No, uh, think they said they’ll be back in an hour, depending on traffic," Steve replied, trying his most charming smile to ease the odd tension in the room. 

It didn't work on the oldest Williams sibling as she remained unsmiling.“Fair enough. Where’s Danny?”

“Asleep. He was tired.” Although Steve had felt pleased that Danny was happy to let Steve wait up to make sure his kids and parents got back home safe and sound, now Steve wished his partner was down here to bridge this awkwardness between Steve and Stella. Unlike when he’d met Bridget when she’d come to Hawaii on a work trip, he felt unsure of himself, painfully aware that he was in standing in someone else’s home, that he was the stranger in this place. 

“Okay. I’m gonna go check on him then I’m gonna go shower. I’ll be down in twenty.”

“Um, alright.” Waiting until Stella had disappeared upstairs, Steve sat down and grabbed the yearbook again just to have something to do with his hands but playing ‘Spot Danny’ wasn’t distracting him as it had done before Stella had arrived home. By the time Danny’s sister came down dressed in sweats, her hair wet and slicked back like her younger brother’s, Steve was doing his best not to stand at parade rest as he examined all the photos displayed around the living room: of Danny, his siblings, his parents, the grandchildren. This was a family home the way a family home should be. No matter what Steve had done over the past ten years, the McGarrett home still felt like a relic to a faded illusion.

“Drink?” asked Stella as she padded her way towards the drinks cabinet in the corner, her steps soft but sure, betraying her familiarity with her surroundings.

“Um, it’s late, I’m-” Steve began but was cut off. 

“Trust me, you’re gonna need it.” Six words and Steve’s spine straightened, his shoulders dropped. He watched as Stella poured two generous fingers of bourbon in the crystal tumblers that had been a present from Danny to his parents two Christmases ago. He knew as he’d received the same alongside a bottle of Four Roses that Danny and he had shared out on the lanai many a night after.

Accepting the tumbler, resisting the urge to peer down his nose at the eldest Williams sibling as he would a perp, Steve thanked her but remained standing as Stella took a seat in the arm-chair by the window. At Stella’s pointed look at the couch, he relented and sat down, but his posture remained rigid. 

“I assume you have something to say to me that you think I won’t like,” Steve said, taking a sip of the bourbon, enjoying the burn. 

“Oh, I know you won’t like it,” Stella’s voice was firm, her gaze appraising. "I'm still in two minds though."

"About what?"

"Whether to thank you or hate you."

Steve's brow furrowed, his confusion evident on his face. His only connection to Stella Williams beyond Danny had been Eric and as far as he knew, the kid was doing great as part of the NYPD crime lab, having left Hawaii last year to be closer to family. He didn't think he had done anything to merit Eric bad-mouthing him to his mother. 

"I don't understand," he said finally. 

"Well," Danny's sister brought her finger up to her lips, biting the tip in a gesture reminiscent of her brother. "I could hate you for leaving my brother two days after he left the hospital, or thank you because if you hadn't done that, he wouldn't be here in Jersey now."

Steve's heart clenched and he took a bigger sip of the whiskey. He stayed silent because if nothing else, he knew when a Williams was not yet done when they had something to get off their chest. 

"But then I could go further. I could thank you for helping Danny make Hawaii a home these past ten years, but also hate you for being one of the reasons he didn't leave when he had the chance." Stella must have correctly read the surprise on Steve's face because she smiled. "Who do you think went to pick up Rachel and Grace from the airport when Danny called to say he'd stayed behind to get you out of jail?"

"I didn't ask him to stay for me," Steve finally said, but even he knew his defense was weak. 

"You didn't have to."

"You blame me for Danny not reconciling with Rachel nine years ago?"

"Not really, Danny and Rachel would never have lasted. But maybe Rachel wouldn't have hidden Charlie from him for three years if Danny had gotten on that plane."

"You're seriously going to put Rachel's lies on me?" 

"No, you're right, that's not fair to you," Stella conceded, and for a moment there was silence. Steve knew his own heartbeat, wild and pacing though it was, couldn't be heard by anyone else but he kept his hands wrapped tightly around his whiskey tumbler so the tremble in his fingers wasn't visible. 

"Danny's the best of us, you know?" Steve looked up at Stella's softly spoken words, surprised by the sudden shift. She didn't wait for him to add anything before she continued. "He's the one who has kept this family together, even from five thousand miles away. Everything that happened with Matty, our parents almost breaking up, sorting my kid out. But he's my little brother, he's mine to look out for. So when I start hearing about the shit he's getting himself into in Hawaii, shit that he didn't face here as a cop, I have a right to be concerned. And the common theme behind all that shit? You. Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett." Steve hadn't heard his name said so derisively in a long time. "Because of you, my brother's crash landing a plane onto a beach, he's down half a liver, he's getting kidnapped and shot."

"Did Danny-."

"No, and if you think that, then you don't know my brother at all. I could always read the truth between whatever Danny said, and when combined with all the stuff Eric lets slip, I know more of what's gone on with Danny these past few years than the rest of my family." 

"I _never_ asked him to risk his life for me, Stella."

"No, I know. And on paper, you're not to blame, I know you've saved his life a dozen times over. But love isn't logical, and I love my brother, so I get to point the fingers, lay the blame, especially when my brother gets hurt."

"So what? You want me to stop seeing Danny? To disappear from his life?" Steve cursed himself for asking the question, because if Stella said yes, he wasn't sure what he would do. He couldn't blame Stella for blaming him for Danny's pain when he blamed himself for the latest bullet wound in Danny's chest, but it was another thing to hear it coming from Danny's family. 

"What, like you did a few weeks ago? Don't even get me started on asking you why you suddenly felt the need to show up in Jersey when you’ve never visited in the past ten years. You may have fixed things with Grace but unlike my nineteen-year-old niece, I do not think the sun shines out of your ass."

Steve's response, whatever it would have been, was interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up into the Williams drive. Grace and Charlie were back and along with their grandparents would be coming into the middle of this shitfest any second now. 

Stella glanced towards the door before standing up, walking forward until she stood between the front door and the couch where Steve sat, frozen. 

"Danny's a grown man, he loves who he loves. But I called him that day, just after you'd left. And I am telling you now, if you ever make my brother sound the way he did that day on the phone, I will personally ensure that you never get to hurt anyone in my family again. Do you understand?"

The front door opened and Steve watched as Stella turned and welcomed an ecstatic Grace and Charlie with open arms.

* * *

Lifting the blanket Steve crawled into bed in the gentlest way possible, lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling as he contemplated how long he should wait to put his arm around Danny without risk of waking him. 

“Kids get in okay?” Steve startled at the sound of his partner’s voice, heavy with sleep. 

“Yeah, they loved it, took ages for me to get Charlie to settle in bed,” murmured Steve, snuggling in closer now that he knew Danny was partly awake. “Think we’re gonna be listening to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat for the next month.”

“Hmm, good, he needs to get his history grade up.” Danny’s nose crinkled, even as his eyes remained closed. “You been drinking?”

“Stella and I just had a glass while we were waiting for them to get back.”

“Oh yeah, I told you she was gonna come over after her shift, right?”

“Yeah, you’d mentioned it.” Steve hesitated for a moment, weighing up disrupting Danny’s rest with his own needs. “Think I finally met a Williams who hates me.”

Danny snorted. “Impossible, babe. Every Williams family member is part of the Steve McGarrett Fan Club. There are fights for the title of number one fan and everything.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve smiled slightly, Danny's words a mild salve on the wounds left by Stella's. “What’s your position?”

“I’m the founding member babe. Treasurer, too, I collect the fees in return for access to you.”

“Well, I think Stella might not be renewing her membership when the time comes, Danno.”

Danny’s tone turned from joking to serious as he sighed. “Whatever she said, don’t take it to heart, Steve. She’s the oldest, she was always protective, and after Matty…” Steve slung his arm across Danny’s waist at the mention of his dead brother, wishing now he hadn’t said anything. “She’s gone into overdrive, especially with me being so far away.”

“She really loves you.” If nothing else, for no other reason, Stella Williams would always be a star in his eyes, even if she hated Steve. No person who loved Danny could ever be someone Steve disliked. 

“Yeah, she’s great. I was never afraid of pissing off my parents but Stella, man… you should ask her about the time she caught me sneaking back into the house drunk and high when I was 15, what she did to me. Not in front of Grace or Charlie, though.”

“You bet I will.” Assuming Stella didn't recoil at the very sight of Steve from now on. 

“Hmph. Sleep now.”

“Okay, buddy.”

“Sweet dreams.” Danny’s words were slurred as he pressed closer to Steve, his breaths deepening to showcase his descent into sleep. Wrapping his arm tighter around Danny’s waist, Steve followed him into sleep in his first proper night in a bed since he left Montana.

* * *

_The sound of the Silverado’s engine as Tani put it through its paces could not drown out the wheezing quality of Danny’s breaths. With one arm tight around Danny’s waist to keep him solidly across the backseat of Steve’s car, and the other pressing the pressure bandage against the gunshot wound, Steve could feel every ragged rise and fall of Danny’s chest._

_“You’re okay, buddy, I got you, you’re okay,” Steve kept murmuring to the man in his arms. Pressed together as tight as they were, he could feel the intermittent motion of Danny’s chest, the blood leaking from the exit wound in his partner’s back soaking into his trousers. “Tani, take a left at the top of the road, head to King’s, it’s closest, they’re waiting for him.”_

_“Got it, boss. How’s Danny?”_

_“He’s fine, he’s got no choice but to be,” replied Steve, not sure if his words were for his, Danny’s or Tani’s benefit. Looking down at his partner, he asked, “You hear that, buddy? You got no choice.”_

_Steve’s heart plummeted as he noticed a change in Danny’s breaths. Loud and ragged as they were, he could hear each and every single one, each one a clear effort, but now Steve could have sworn that the gap between each was longer than the one prior, a twisted fibonacci sequence given life in his partner’s battle for oxygen. “Danny?”_

_Receiving no response, Steve brought his right hand up and began rubbing his knuckles against Danny’s sternum. It had worked when he’d found Danny, it would work again. Except, there was no flailing of Danny’s arm towards the source of pain, no flinching or groaning. “Danny? Hey, wake up.” He pressed his knuckles even harder against his partner’s collarbone, an action that would have resulted in a punch to the face had he done this to a hale and hearty Danny. “Danny, please. Wake up, open your eyes.”_

_“Boss?” Tani’s worried voice came from the driver’s seat._

_He didn’t have the capacity to deal with anyone else’s worry. “Eyes on the road, Tani.” He brushed his hand down against Danny’s arm and gripped his wrist, feeling for his pulse. “Danno, come on, buddy.”_

_When he couldn’t feel a reassuring thrum in Danny’s wrist, Steve pressed his fingers against Danny’s neck. “Danny?” He could feel a slight beat but it could easily have been his imagination. Either way, Danny’s chest had yet to rise under Steve’s hand._

_This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t happening._

_He’d done what Diayu Mei had wanted. He hadn’t been stubborn, he’d gone to the drop alone, he’d handed over the cipher, he hadn’t tried to be a hero - Danny was supposed to be fine._

_This couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let this happen._

_“Danny! Wake up, hey!” Steve began shaking the man in his arms, whilst still keeping hand pressed against the gunshot wound. If Danny wasn’t going to respond to his gentle approach, Steve was more than happy to roughen things up a bit. “Hey, come on.”_

_He needed Danny to open his eyes. Danny hadn't opened his eyes in the entirety of time since Steve had found him._

_“Steve?” He ignored Tani’s voice, distorted and odd-sounding as it was as he continued shaking the man in his arms. “Steve?” Danny’s face was passive, no indication that even unconscious Steve’s rough treatment was causing him pain. And his chest still failed to move. Where Danny’s heart was barely beating, and his breathing non-existent, Steve’s heartbeat was shooting through the roof and he was breathing hard enough for both of them. But he would give every last breath left in his body if it meant that Danny would take a breath of his own._

_“Danny!” Steve said loudly, using everything available to him to rouse the man in his arms. “Danny!”_

“Steve!”

Steve’s eyes flew open, and he jerked back as he felt a presence hovering over him. Pushing with both hands against it to force the threat away from him, he swung his legs and brought himself up to standing. The adrenaline of his sudden waking and disconcertia ruined his balance, and he stumbled backward and would have fallen flat on his ass had his back not met the bedroom door with a loud thump. 

Stifling a sob as the emotions from his dream penetrated through the momentary distraction of entering the waking world, Steve slid down the door until his ass met the floor, his knees coming up to protect his chest from whatever threat may come his way. His first moment of clarity, he realized it had been Danny’s voice calling his name, Danny hovering over him, not some enemy. His second moment of clarity, he realized that when he’d pushed away what his befuddled mind had perceived as a threat, he’d been pushing Danny. A Danny who was still recovering from a bullet wound to the chest.

God, he’d hurt Danny. Frozen as he was on the floor, he couldn’t command his limbs to move towards the bed he’d been sharing with Danny to check on him, his breathing picking up until the only sound he could hear was his own heartbeat thumping away in his chest, and the rattle of his own fight for oxygen. 

Danny was hurt, he’d hurt Danny, Danny was hurt, he’d hurt Danny. 

He startled as his wrists were encased in a vice-like grip and his hands were pulled away from where they had covered his face, his palms digging into his eyes. 

“Hey, hey, Steve, it's me, you're fine, you're okay."

Steve kept his eyes closed, his head bent, even as his mind registered the hushed soothing words falling from his partner's mouth as the other man knelt before him, the cracking of his knees a giveaway. Danny's chest pressed against his shins as his partner tried to soothe Steve with his presence.

"Slow your breaths, babe, easy, everything's okay. You're in Jersey, my parent's place, everything's okay."

The slightly strained quality to Danny's words made Steve get a grip on himself, forcing himself to gain control of his breathing. Holding each inhale for three seconds and trying to lengthen his exhales, Steve used the tricks he's been taught to bring his respiration and heart-rate to a more acceptable level, shoving the mental images of his nightmare into a deeper part of his brain to deal with later. 

Opening his eyes, he twisted his wrists until he grabbed Danny's hands in his, keeping ahold of Danny's right hand whilst reaching for his torso with the other. 

"Shit, Danny, I'm so sorry, did I hurt you?" Steve tried to be gentle as he pressed his hand against Danny's heart, each reassuring thump making the nightmare fade a bit further away even as the frantic beat of Danny's heart told Steve that he had frightened his partner. Danny's hand came to grab Steve's as it pressed against Danny's chest, his thumb caressing the back of Steve's hand without moving it away.

For a moment, they remained frozen in place. Barely any light was filtering in through the window in the bedroom, middle of the night as it was. What little light there was came from a streetlight across the road, just enough for Steve to see the blonde tint of Danny’s hair. 

A gentle knock on the bedroom door shook them both from their reverie. 

"Danny? You okay?" A whisper carried through the door, soft enough that if the two men had been asleep, they wouldn’t have noticed. 

"Yeah, we're good Stella, thanks. Go back to sleep." Danny remained where he was, but his response matched in volume to his sister's. Steve closed his eyes, hating that he'd woken up Danny's sister because of his fucked up head. 

"You sure? Do you need water or anything?"

"I'm good sis, thanks. Sorry we woke you."

"No worries. I'll see you in the morning."

Out of habit, Steve counted the steps it took Stella to go from the room he and Danny were staying in to the guest room she was inhabiting for the night. 

"Steve?" He jerked his attention back to the man in front of him. "You okay?"

Steve tried to jerk his hand back from where it still pressed against Danny's chest, but the other man tightened his hold and wouldn't let him.

"No. You're not running from this," his partner stated quietly but firmly, a statement of fact that assumed compliance. "You were saying my name."

"It wasn't a sex dream, if that's what you're worried about."

"Steve."

" _Fine_." The lateness of the hour, the closeness of Danny, the embarrassment of having woken up Danny's sister, the sheer relief that he wasn't back in the dream loosened Steve's tongue. "This time, it was me taking you to hospital in my truck, okay? Except you stopped breathing even before we got to the main road." The two sentences alone were enough to bring back the nightmare in vivid detail and Steve crumpled Danny's t-shirt in his fingers as a distraction from the imagery. 

"This time?" Steve bit his lip in annoyance at his slip. Trust Danny to pick him up on it.

"You wanna know the other times, too? Okay. Let's see, there's you dead in your burning car, you dead in the basement still in chains, you dead on the floor in that fucking shack, you dying in surgery." 

"Steve." A lecture conveyed in an exhalation. Danny was the master of using a hundred words when ten could do, but he could also pack a punch with one.

He was being callous, and an asshole, he knew it. He may have been the one dreaming about this, but Danny was the one who'd lived it. Danny who'd been taken because Steve couldn't get to him in time. Danny who'd been chained up and beaten. Danny who'd been shot, with no idea if Steve would get to him in time. Steve had no right to make this all about him.

Steve twisted the knife of guilt deeper inside his own gut. "You wanna know my favorite? You tied up in a chair in my dad's study, a bullet through your head." 

The second time his dreams had cast Danny in his father's place, he'd driven his truck to the closest general store to Joe's ranch in Montana and bought enough bottles of whiskey and enough energy drinks to send him crashing into a dreamless sleep three nights later. 

The first time had been the night after he'd brought Danny home from the hospital. He'd fallen asleep on the couch and in his dream, he had woken up and walked into his father's study only to find Danny's dead body in the chair his dad had been killed. He'd jerked awake, crept into his bedroom where Danny was passed out on a cocktail of painkillers and watched him sleep. By the time the sun's first rays appeared on the horizon, he'd bought his plane ticket, his flight a mere 36 hours away. Enough time to pack, make arrangements, say a quick goodbye.

He leaned his head back against the door, his throat bared, glad that Danny couldn't see his face in the darkness of the room, and especially glad he couldn't see whatever expression was on Danny's face, nor the healing cut on his partner’s bottom lip. He knew it had to be a coincidence, but when he’d seen the deep cut in Danny’s lips the first time, his mind had flashed to pictures of his dad’s dead body, the cut on his lip in the exact same place. 

He shouldn't have been surprised when he felt Danny stand up and move away from him, his limp obvious, his steps hesitant as he hadn't grabbed his cane.

He was.

He shouldn't have been surprised when Danny came back and draped the blanket from the bed over him, before sitting down next to Steve, shoulder to shoulder, back to the wall.

He was. He hadn't even noticed he'd been trembling. 

"I'm not gonna waste my breath reminding you that what happened, to me, your dad, wasn't your fault. In exchange, I want you to tell me, honestly, the last time you had a proper night's sleep." 

Steve couldn't help it. He laughed. 

It would have been easier if Danny had asked him for the nuclear codes.

"I wasn't sleeping even before you got taken, Danny."

"I know. That wasn't the question I asked." It was hard to read the tone of Danny's voice. More than anything, he just seemed resigned. 

Steve shrugged. "I don't know, man. If I knew, I'd tell you."

They sat in silence for a bit, surrounded by the quiet of Danny’s parents’ neighborhood. Grace and Charlie were asleep in the room next door, Danny’s parents opposite them. 

“You know sleep and I haven’t ever been the best of friends.” Danny’s voice was quiet, resigned, not quite breaking the silence that had enveloped them so much as nudging against it; a whisper that could easily have been ignored, except Steve could never have ignored Danny, even if he’d tried. 

“Yeah buddy, I know.” There wasn’t much he didn’t know about Danny at this point in their lives. 

“It got really bad last year. Lou had to take me aside, told me he’d have me signed off field duty if I didn’t sort myself out, that I was becoming a hazard to myself and the team.”

That was new. “I didn't know about this. Why didn’t I know about this?”

“That doesn’t matter. The reason I bring it up is that the reason I wasn’t sleeping was because of the dreams I would have. It got easier to just crash for an hour or two, here and there, so there wouldn’t be any risk of getting into REM sleep.”

“How’d you fix it?”

“I wouldn’t say I fixed it, so much as coped with it. I got help, went through a few people until I met someone who didn’t make me want to shove a pen in my eardrums. He helped me out with some tricks and stuff, worked well enough to get Lou off my back.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I wasn’t hiding it. You saw the bonsai tree in my office; I wasn’t joking when I said it was therapeutic.”

Steve rubbed his forehead. “Where was I? Why didn’t you tell me properly?”

“Well, you were a bit busy babe, doing your one-man mission in Mexico. What was I gonna do, call you up and tell you that I was having nightmares every night of my best friend half-buried in a ditch somewhere? We didn’t even know where you were, whether you were dead or alive until Junior tracked you down.”

Steve’s heart twinged in his chest, guilt churning again in his gut. He’d never asked Danny what it was like for him in the time he was away, too wrapped up in his own grief from all that followed. Danny had been alive and in one piece when he’d shown up to get Steve from Washington DC, and as far as he was concerned, that’s all he had room to care about at the time. 

“You should have told me.”

“When? Before the funeral, or after? In between your own nightmares about your dad, Joe your mom?” 

Steve winced. Of course, Danny didn’t need him to say what had kept him up those first few months since he’d all but moved into Steve’s house under the guide of mold issues. 

“So why are you telling me now?”

“You know why I’m telling you now.”

Of course Steve knew. “You want me to get help. Speak to a shrink.” He tried to not let any derision creep into his tone. If speaking to a shrink had helped Danny, then he was grateful for whoever it was that had done for his partner what he couldn’t do. 

“I want you to be able to sleep at night. I want you to not run away from the people you love because you think that’ll make it all better. I want you to be okay. ”

Steve turned to face Danny, focusing on the most important part of that confession. “Me leaving, you thought I was running away?”

Sitting shoulder to shoulder as they were, Steve both heard and felt Danny’s sigh, but frowned as the sigh was cut off by a slight cough. It was summertime, but summer nights in Jersey were still much cooler than summer nights in Hawaii. It wasn’t good for his partner to be sitting on a cold wooden floor because Steve was fucked up in the head. He started shoving the part of the blanket that covered him towards Danny. 

“I don’t know, babe. Maybe. Out of the two of us, I never imagined it would be you leaving me behind in Oahu. Funny how things work out, huh?” Steve looked up from where he had started tucking the blanket around Danny. There was enough light filtering in through the window, at the right angle, for him to see the white of Danny’s teeth as he smiled.

“Danny. I was never leaving you.” Steve knew that he hadn’t magically fixed everything with Danny his first night in Jersey, but he wondered how much he’d have to repeat himself for Danny to realize that Steve was speaking the complete and utter truth. 

“Yeah, you said.” Danny started pushing the blanket away. “Help me up, my ass is going to sleep.”

Steve did as he was told, twisting around and grabbing Danny under his elbows, he stood them both up, trying not to flashback to a few weeks ago when he’d forced a bloodied Danny to his feet and made him walk towards his truck, Steve’s hand gripping Danny’s belt in a vice-like hold just to keep him moving. 

Once they were standing, Steve keeping a hold of the man in his arms, he felt Danny grab his chin, forcing Steve to look down at the face of his partner, shadowed as it was in the darkness of the room. 

“You gonna be able to go back to sleep?”

Steve looked over his shoulder at the digital alarm clock on the bedside table before turning back to Danny. The sun would begin lightening the horizon soon. “It’ll be light in a bit. I’m assuming I won’t get stabbed if I go for a run then?”

Danny snorted. “This is East Orange, not Wildwood. You’ll be fine. Come on, I’ll sit with you downstairs until you go.”

Steve brushed his hands over Danny’s arms and shoulders before cupping his face in his hands. “No, you sleep, I’m sorry I woke you. I’ll come back to bed after my run, I promise.” He knew all the different shades of exhaustion that could be present in his partner, after ten years of working cases with him, some of which had them running on fumes for days in a row on little to no sleep. And he knew first-hand how much recovering from a bullet-wound could take out of you. Sleep, and plenty of it, was the best thing for Danny now that he was on the mend, and Steve couldn’t stand in the way. Not least because if Grace, and now Stella, found out that he’d disrupted Danny’s much deserved rest, his head would be served on a platter for dinner. 

Danny’s hands came up to circle Steve’s wrists. “You sure?” That, if nothing else, told Steve that he was right - his partner was exhausted. 

“Yes,” he replied, leaning down and pressing a kiss to Danny’s forehead, relishing the feel of an alive Danny in his arms to chase away the last vestiges of his latest nightmare. “I’ll come back to bed after, I promise.”

“Better shower first,” Danny grumbled as he wrapped his arms around Steve’s torso for a brief hug. 

“Nah, I’ll wake you up with my sweaty armpits,” murmured Steve, pressing his lips into Danny’s hair. 

“You’re disgusting,” Danny grumbled, pushing away from Steve and slowly sitting on the bed and bringing his legs up.

“You love me anyway,” Steve shot back as he gathered the blanket from the floor and covered Danny with it. He sat down on the bed in the gap next to Danny’s hips, bracketing Danny’s body with his arm and body, reluctant to leave just yet. 

“Don’t tempt fate, I can change my mind,” mumbled Danny as he got comfortable, the beginnings of sleep slowing his speech, probably not helped by the fact that Steve had begun running his fingers through his partner’s hair, the tactic he’d used on Charlie when Steve had done bedtime working on Danny just as well. 

“Not if I can help it,” whispered Steve, his words unacknowledged as Danny fell asleep. 

He stayed in the same position until the sun rose. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a tough one to write, and one I'd appreciate your thoughts on. The healing will start happening in the next chapter or two. 
> 
> If you fancy a bit of fluff after all this, head to my story 'take off your mask (it's nice to meet)' which was written in direct counter to the angst of this chapter!


	3. Stella (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So I don't understand how you can have Danny there, right in front of you, alive but for the grace of God, and you just choose to walk away. When it's something that boy's family would've given anything for. What we, Danny's family, want but can't have. And you have, but clearly don't want."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since the Stella/Steve showdown, so I recommend a quick read of that in the previous chapter to make this one make sense. Thank you for all your lovely comments on the previous chapter, and I hope this one was worth the wait!
> 
> I would like to say a big thank you to AlgeriaTouchshriek - your lovely comments through my entire H50 works kept me going through a draining work week last week and forced me to break through the writer's block I'd been experiencing since work restarted. And I can finally say I know what it feels like to have some go full English major on my writing! x
> 
> Many thanks also to the H50 Big Bang Discord writers for helping me work through a really silly but really important plot point in this chapter that was holding it up!

"Uncle Steve?" 

A sweet voice and a gentle knocking against the door brought Steve out of dreamless sleep. Blinking his eyes open, he realized he was alone in bed, and the light through the window showed it was clearly mid-morning. 

"Uncle Steve? Danno says it's time for breakfast and that if you don't come down now, I can have your pancakes."

Steve had gone for a run around the neighborhood after he'd left Danny asleep in bed, and when his legs started getting that jelly-like feel he'd quietly let himself back into the Williams family home, pleased with himself when he'd managed to shower and change in the en suite to his and Danny's bedroom without waking any sleeping Williams's. 

Except his sleep debt had proved too substantial and he'd ended up crawling into bed next to his sleeping partner with hair still wet, a towel protecting his pillow from getting damp. And it looked like he'd slept past his partner waking and getting out of bed. Huh.

Sitting up in bed and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Steve took a moment to make sure he was decent before he called out: "Come in, buddy, I'm up." 

He smiled as he found himself with an armful of Charlie. Gripping him by the waist, he turned the giggling boy upside down. 

"What's this about you eating my pancakes, huh?" Steve started seeking out the most ticklish spots on the boy even as he kept a tight grip around Charlie’s legs.

"I haven't eaten your pancakes, Uncle Steve, I promise! Danno's making them now," Charlie confessed as blood rushed to his bed, unable to contain his giggles. 

"Well then," Steve hauled Charlie up until he sat on the bed next to him. "Let's go get them before your sister gets her hands on 'em." 

The sound of multiple voices enveloped Steve as he walked downstairs with Charlie, letting himself be led by them to the sizable kitchen where Clara, Eddie, and Stella sat with mugs of coffee as Grace stood by her father at the stove, doing the heavy lifting by being the person flipping pancakes on the cast-iron pan. 

“Morning, Steve,” Clara greeted with a smile as Eddie got up and poured another mug of coffee and set in front of an empty seat, indicating where Steve should sit. Navy SEAL or not, he was glad it was at the opposite end of the table to Stella, considering their conversation the night before. 

“Morning, Uncle Steve. Pancakes will be ready in a few,” piped up Grace whilst Danny gave Steve the once over from where he stood leaning against the counter, one hand holding the ladleful of batter as Grace plated a cooked pancake. 

“Morning, all. Sorry you had to send Charlie to get me, I don’t normally sleep in so late,” Steve said as he wrapped his hands around the warmth of the mug as Charlie took the seat next to him, reaching for a big glass of orange juice. 

“I remember Danny telling us about your habit of getting up at fool o’clock to go swimming. Won’t find none of that in this household,” Eddie replied.

There was a thunk on the table near him and Steve looked away from Eddie to see a slab of butter next to his mug, Stella stepping sway and going back to her seat. She must have read the expression in his face because she rolled her eyes and said, “Danny once called me at almost midnight Jersey time to ask my professional medical opinion on whether butter in coffee ‘boosted energy and enhanced brain function’. Not a conversation I’m likely to forget.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Part of Steve was tempted to see if the butter had been doctored in any way, maybe with laxatives or poison, but he didn’t know how he’d check without looking like a weirdo. Some of this must have been visible on his face because he caught Danny’s eye and it was clear that his partner had read his thoughts and was holding back a grin. Resisting the temptation to stick his tongue out at Danny in front of his kids, parents, and sister, Steve settled for spooning a big dollop of butter in his coffee and letting the atmosphere of a Jersey Williams family morning chase away the last vestiges of disrupted sleep.

* * *

"Stella, I appreciate you trying to help, but it's okay, really. It's just a few cuts, I can patch it up myself."

"Just shut up and sit, will ya?"

Silenced, unwilling to antagonize the person who was about to pull glass shards out of his hand and forearm, Steve took a seat at the kitchen table and laid his arm out on the tea towel Stella had placed on the kitchen table. 

For a long moment, the only sounds in the kitchen were those that filtered through from the backyard: the kids squealing as they played tag, with Eric and Grace joining in to chase Charlie, Sophie, and Mike; Bridget's and Clara's higher-pitched voices and laughter overlaying the deeper voices of Ted, Bridget’s husband, and Eddie. If Steve focused, he could tell which gaps denoted Danny's contribution to the conversation. For all that Danny was a talker, in group situations he was often happy listening to others, only joining in once in a while with an astute observation or an acerbic remark. Until a few minutes ago, Steve and Stella had been part of the group until an unfortunate collision between a glass of iced tea and the ceramic edge of the garden table had led to Steve apologizing profusely to Clara for his uncharacteristic clumsiness, Stella silently motioning Danny to stay in his seat as she ushered Steve into the kitchen and fetched the first aid kit. 

But at the moment, Steve's focus was on the blonde head bent over his arm, one hand holding up her phone whose flashlight she was using to search for the glint of glass shards, the other holding a pair of tweezers as she deftly picks out the glass, tiny sliver by tiny sliver, from the flesh of Steve's palm. But despite that, Steve startled as Stella spoke up, her conversational tone belying the content of her words: 

"A few weeks ago, think it was the night after you called and told us Danny had been hurt, we had a kid brought into the ER."

A part of Steve knew that whatever he was about to hear would cause him more pain than having shards pulled from his flesh, but a greater part of him hoped that whatever else Stella now had to say to him, after last night, would help her, even if it meant Steve had to take the hits. God, what was it with this family and getting under his skin.

"Yeah?" Steve said gently when he realized Stella was waiting for him to acknowledge that he was listening to her.

"Yeah. Blonde kid, couldn't have been older than 22. Reminded me of Danny at that age, but without the mohawk."

Steve smiled slightly as his mind cast up the picture of a younger Danny posing for a charity calendar, his anger when he’d found out Eric had sent the photo to his entire address book, before hissing slightly as Stella pulled out a slightly bigger shard in an unconscious act of sibling karmic retribution for Steve’s enjoyment of Danny’s embarrassment. 

"Apparently, he'd just moved back to Jersey after going to college on the west coast." Putting the tweezers down, Stella reached into the first aid kit and pulled out a piece of gauze that she used to dab away some of the blood on Steve's palm before taking up the tweezers again. "And it got me thinking, you know?"

"About what?" Steve prodded when Stella didn't continue. 

"In the ten years since Danny left, I never made it out to Hawaii to see him. In the first few years, Eric was still in school and getting into trouble, and I didn't have the money for tickets and a hotel for both of us. And then when I spoke to Danny about maybe visiting a few years ago, he said he would have more time to spend with me and the whole family if he used his vacation time to fly over." Stella shrugged. "But it's hard with hospital shift work. I never got to spend as much time with him as much as I'd like when he did visit." 

Moving the phone up to Steve's wrist and forearm to see if any of the shards had embedded themselves any higher, Stella's tone was almost distracted as she added: "I wouldn't be surprised if you spent more time with Danny in an average fortnight than I have in the past ten years."

"If it makes you feel any better, I think the same is true for my sister, Mary. We haven't been able to see each other as much as I would like, just like Danny with you guys."

"Yeah, Danny mentioned she lives in LA." Satisfied there were no more shards, Stella put aside the tweezers, turned off the torchlight on her phone, and reached for the antiseptic wipes and more gauze. Wiping away the blood, Stella began dabbing the cuts with antiseptic. "So anyway, that kid. He was really looking forward to being home, you know? And his family was really glad to have him back."

"Was?"

"We did everything we could, but he didn't even make it to the OR. Bled out right there in front of us." A lock of Stella's blonde hair had come loose and was hiding much of her face from Steve's eyes. "He'd been out with his girlfriend, showing her the sights, some asshole tried to rob them, he resisted and got shot point-blank in the chest for it." Stella's voice didn't waver as she spoke, but she gave Steve a sharp look when his fingers flexed in reaction to her words before turning back to the task at hand. "I was there when the doctor told his family. And it got me thinking how easily we could have lost Danny this time. And how little time I'd had with him these past ten years." 

Now, Stella sat back and looked Steve dead in the eyes. 

"So I don't understand how you can have Danny there, right in front of you, alive but for the grace of God, and you just choose to walk away. When it's something that boy's family would've given anything for. What we, Danny's family, want but can't have. And you have, but clearly don't want." 

Stella looked away as she finished speaking, but not before Steve could see the moisture welling up in her eyes. Clearing her throat, she stood up and moved towards the sink, her back to Steve. 

For a long moment, silence pervaded in the kitchen. 

"What has,” Steve started, paused, continued. “What has Danny told you about my family?" 

"We know you met because he was the detective in charge of your dad's murder. That you had all thought your mom was dead for the longest time, but she wasn't, until a few months ago." At this, Stella looked over her shoulder at Steve, a look of empathy on her eyes that Steve had seen before on another Williams' face. 

"Yeah. When I was fifteen, we thought she had died, my dad sent us away because he thought he was protecting us. I didn't understand why he would send away the people he loved until I had to do the same to Mary. She'd come to visit me, ended up getting kidnapped, so I put her on the next flight out." 

"That couldn't have been easy," Stella replied as she wiped underneath her eyes and turned back to the kitchen table, reaching for a roll of gauze as she sat down again. 

"No. And it couldn't have been easy for you to send Eric so far away, back when he got into trouble for stealing a car."

"No, it wasn't. What are you getting at?" Stella asked as she wrapped Steve's hand in gauze, the cuts on his fingers too small to need covering up. 

"I'm not sure. Maybe that I understand that loving someone means making hard decisions."

"You telling me you leaving Danny behind when he's barely out of the hospital is the same as me sending my son to his uncle to get him straightened out?" Having finished wrapping Steve's hand, Stella started gathering up the used supplies to throw away, an undercurrent of disbelief to her voice. 

Steve shook his head, annoyed at himself for not making himself clear. But words were just coming out of his mouth, the order and nature of them a mystery even to himself before he spoke them. 

"Danny's a great cop. And I knew that from the moment I met him, it's why I asked him to be my partner. And as far as possible, I've tried to keep Danny safe these past ten years. Not just because it's my job, as his boss. But because I love him. But because I respect him, as a cop, it hasn't always been easy. Our jobs are inherently dangerous but he went into it knowing the risks, he has stayed a cop despite everything he has gone through. And there are hundreds of people alive today because of him, families which have closure because of things he has done." 

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"I guess what I'm trying to get at… is that a few weeks ago, it was the first time I'd seen him pay the price for something that had nothing to do with him being a cop. Two years ago, he got shot because of a case he'd worked here. Ten years ago, that sarin attack, it was wrong place, wrong time, and it could have happened to anybody on our team. But his injuries now, his pain now, is solely because he has the misfortune of being the person I care about most in the world." Steve smiled at Stella even though there was no humor in it, and her expression was hard to read. "I lost my mom, the man I loved like a father, and a guy I considered to be a brother to the job. I lost my dad to people from my mother's past because he loved her too much to let her go. But how could I have explained to Grace and Charlie that the reason they didn't have a father, why you didn't have a brother, was because he had the bad luck of being loved by me?"

"Danny could have been an accountant, or a baseball player, or whatever, and he still would have been taken and almost killed. Simply because I love him. No other reason. So whilst I understand that loving someone means sending them away to keep them safe from an external threat, what am I supposed to do when it's my love that puts them at risk?" Steve paused as an especially raucous eruption of laughter filtered in from the backyard, Eric's voice in the center of it, yet it wasn't enough to dispel the pain that underlay Steve's words, the lump in his throat growing, making it harder for him to speak. 

"So I left. Because unlike my sister, I couldn't send Danny away from Hawaii, not when he has his life there, people who could keep him safe. I was the risk, the danger to him, how could I stay?" Steve kept his head ducked, unable to look Danny's sister in the eyes as he laid clear that the reason why her family had almost lost another member was because of all the shit Steve and his family had brought into their lives. It served the added benefit of hiding the moisture that by now must have been obvious on Steve's cheeks. "And I rather you think I don't love Danny and have him still be alive and safe, rather than you know I love him, but Danny be dead because of it." His voice breaking on the last words, Steve couldn't say anymore even if he wanted to. 

Steve hadn't planned his words, so he couldn't anticipate what response they'd cause. But even if he'd had the time or mental capacity to predict Stella's reaction, her arms wrapping around his neck as she pulled Steve into a hug would not have been on the list of possibilities. His own arms rose to loosely wrap around Stella's back, tightening when he felt a shudder pass through the older woman's body, Steve's shoulder growing damp where Stella's face was pressed. 

But the moment didn't last as Stella pulled back and turned so that Steve didn't have a direct view of her face as she grabbed the first aid kit. 

"Keep the bandage dry. I'll give Grace some extra gauze, she can practice changing it tomorrow." 

With that, Stella left the kitchen, leaving Steve alone in the kitchen. By the time both rejoined the rest of the family in the backyard, their faces showed no sign of their conversation to all but one person. 

"You okay?" Danny murmured quietly as Steve took the empty seat next to him, his hand reaching to grip Steve's forearm above where the bandage ended. 

"I love you," Steve replied, his words for Danny's ears only even as he watched Stella laugh at something Bridget said. He didn't need to look at his partner to know that his words had both worried and pleased the man.

"I love you too. But that's not what I asked."

"I know. But it's what matters right now. I love you, and all the people here love you. Enjoy it, Danno." Steve turned to his partner with an open smile, and it was enough to put to rest any of Danny's concerns for the remainder of the afternoon.

* * *

It was evening by the time Eddie dropped them all back to the apartment in Jersey City. Stuffed from the big lunch, tired from a whole afternoon of playing with his cousins, it took very little effort for Grace to prod her half-asleep brother through changing and brushing his teeth before doing the same herself and less than an hour after coming back, both the Williams kids were fast asleep in their beds. 

Danny had not been far behind in his own tiredness, having ushered Grace to bed even as she ensured her father had taken his evening round of medications. With the door locked and lights turned low, Steve sat on the sofa as he kept an ear out for Danny preparing for bed, before doing the same himself. Upon exiting the bathroom, Steve looked between the couch and the door to Danny’s bedroom before deciding the former was too far away. Grabbing a pillow and blanket from the cupboard next to the bathroom that held the spare sheets as Danny had pointed out two nights ago, Steve made his way into the bedroom. 

“What are you doing?” Sleep was evident in Danny’s voice, even as he sat up against the headboard, watching through half-lidded eyes as Steve dropped the pillow and blanket on the floor beside the bed. 

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"It looks like you're choosing a very hard floor over a very comfortable bed."

"That's exactly what I'm doing."

"But… why? Just, why?" Steve shouldn't have found the plain confusion in his partner's voice endearing but there were worse things, he supposed.

"I might have nightmares again," Steve said, matter of fact. 

"And? You think sleeping on the floor is a solution?"

"Yes."

"I can't believe I'm telling you this but Steven, just because your Google search told you sleeping on the floor can stop nightmares doesn't mean you should trust everything you read on the internet."

Steve huffed as he sat down on top of the blanket he'd laid down, his back against the bedside table. "Sleeping on the floor is a solution in the sense I won't hurt you again. I can go sleep on the couch if you think that'll be better."

Half of Steve expected Danny to launch into a rant, so he was surprised when Danny reached over with his right arm and gripped the neckline of Steve's shirt, tugging up. Steve moved, to prevent injury both to his shirt and his partner. "What, Danny?"

"You're an idiot. You're sleeping here. Just shut up and close your eyes," Danny muttered as he continued yanking on Steve's shirt until the man had to clamber over Danny's legs and flop down on the empty side of the big bed. 

Deciding he could wait until Danny fell deeply into a medicated sleep to move back to the relative safety of the floor, Steve pretended to give in. "Well, since you asked so nicely."

"I didn't ask, but whatever helps you sleep at night, babe. I just don't wanna hear you bitch about your bad back in the morning," Danny muttered as he gently eased himself into a prone position. A moment later, he smiled even as his eyes closed, his right hand coming up to thump into Steve's side as he added: "Told you I'd watch your back." 

"Literally," Steve grumbled even as his heart warmed at seeing the hint of Danny's humor, a balm to the wounds he'd laid bare at Stella's feet just a few hours ago. Reaching over Danny's torso, Steve flicked the switch on the side lamp and shrouded the room in darkness. "Go to sleep, Danny."

Receiving only a sleepy hum in reply, Steve shifted the pillow under his head before he wrapped his arm around Danny's waist. He'd move down to the floor in a bit, once he was sure Danny was truly asleep. 

A wheezing sound jerked Steve out of the deep sleep he'd lost himself to, his arm tightening around where it had remained wrapped around Danny's waist even as he noticed the sharp point of pain on his forearm. A second later and Steve knew two things: the wheezing sound was coming from his partner and the pain was from fingernails being dug into his forearm. 

"Danny?" Steve reached out and flicked the switch on the lamp he could have sworn he'd turned off just a moment ago. "Danny, what's wrong?" The question was pointless as the illumination of the lamp threw into sharp relief the living nightmare facing Steve.

Danny was awake and struggling. The hand that wasn't clutching Steve was pressed against his chest even as his labored breathing continued without any signs of easing. Danny's eyes were wide open and aware even as he sought out Steve.

"In...hay…"

"Danny, what?" Steve blamed the abrupt waking for his stupidity. "I'm calling an ambulance." Except he couldn't remember where he'd left his phone, whether it would even have enough charge at this point. But his move to get out of bed was interrupted as his partner tightened his grip on Steve's arm. "Danny, I need to get help, I'll be back."

"No… in...haler," Danny wheezed out. "Draw...drawer."

"Inhaler. Drawer," Steve repeated, understanding following a moment later causing an undignified scramble for the bedside table drawer which he pulled open to reveal the grey and blue L-shaped device that Danny needed. 

Grabbing it and shaking it vigorously, Steve put one arm under Danny's back and gently lifted him to a slightly seated position as he popped the cap off the inhaler and brought it to Danny's mouth. 

"Three, two, and inhale," Steve counted down, pressing on the plunger just as Danny took a shaky inhale. "One more, buddy," Steve encouraged as they repeated the process. 

Placing the inhaler in Danny's lap, Steve pressed his hand gently against Danny's chest even as within moments the wheezy quality of Danny's breath began to lessen. He continued to murmur soft words into Danny's ear as he rubbed his partner's back, encouraging Danny to take another pump of the inhaler when after a few minutes his breathing still hadn't fully settled. 

"Okay, buddy?" Steve finally asked when the only sounds in the bedroom for the past few minutes had been quiet, normal breaths from both of them. He felt his partner nod, Danny's head pressed as it was into Steve's collarbone.

"Yeah. Sorry. Thanks."

"Don't," Steve murmured, unclear himself whether he was rejecting the apology or the thanks. "What the hell, Danny?"

"I'm fine," his partner replied. "Happens sometimes. Why I have the inhaler."

"Sometimes? When? Why? What's wrong?"

"Other than a hole in my lung?" Danny's words carried an undercurrent of humor even as it caused Steve's grip to tighten around his partner. "Not my first rodeo, babe. Had this last time I got shot as well, just need to keep the inhaler around for the first few months, that's all."

"Why don't I know about this?" 

"What's there to know? Even kids know how to use inhalers, it's hardly anything special," Danny grumbled even as he started shifting in Steve's arm, moving to lay down again. "Sorry for waking you up." 

"Danny-"

"Sleep, Steve. Before I smother you with a pillow." Even before Danny finished his sentence his eyes had closed and Steve watched as his partner fell back asleep, the strain from the last fifteen minutes evident in the lines of his face.

Steve didn't fall back asleep. Hands gripping the inhaler, he watched Danny's chest rise and fall until the sun rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel for both Danny and Steve, and the path to healing isn't an easy one. Next chapter, it's a big Danny/Steve conversation. 
> 
> As always, your thoughts on the Stella vs Steve showdown 2 will be much appreciated!


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